


Through a Demon Glass

by loversandantiheroes



Category: Dark Tower - Stephen King, Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Gen, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-17
Updated: 2013-08-17
Packaged: 2017-12-23 19:10:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/930054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loversandantiheroes/pseuds/loversandantiheroes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rumpelstiltskin uses a magical crystal ball to try to discern Belle's fate.  Unfortunately for him, it has a mind of its own and a hunger for pain and grief.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Through a Demon Glass

**Author's Note:**

> Another fit set during Skin Deep, this takes place immediately after Regina delivers Rumpelstiltskin the news of Belle's supposed death. Involves accounts of her supposed torture, and a whole boatload of angst.
> 
> This is a small crossover, the crystal ball Rumpelstiltskin uses is the Grapefruit - the pink Bend of Maerlyn's Rainbow from Stephen King's Dark Tower series. I'm working on a longer fic currently to show how Rumpel gained possession of the ball, but it's still in progress.

_You can never break the chain_

_There is never love without pain_

- Rush,  _Secret Touch_  


 

* * *

 

His hands were shaking so badly he nearly dropped the wooden box twice.  Breathing was hard, air seemed to be able to enter his lungs only in tiny wheezing gasps.  He fought for a deeper breath, fingers gripping the old wooden box painfully tight, the corners biting his hands.

_A lie.  A lie.  By all the gods, please let it be a lie._

Still trembling, he thumbed the latch and opened the box.  For a moment the sphere in inside was dull and dark, but then it pulsed alight with a rose-pink light.  It sensed him, his anger, his welling grief, like a wolf scenting a deer in a darkened wood, and it filled his head with a buzz that was the roar of its hunger.

Maerlyn’s Rainbow, Jefferson had called it.  He had never asked who Maerlyn was, his handiwork seemed to speak well enough for itself.  Rumpelstiltskin gazed down at the pulsating pink light, like a spectral heart it seemed to beat, and felt the sickly pleasant thrum that came from it.  It would show him anything, surely, and it would drain him like a leech while he stared raptly into its pretty pink depths.  This he knew from experience.

It glowed brighter when he touched it, pink light bathing his twisted features as he held the globe aloft.  A feeling like creeping tendrils in his mind, a radiating warmth through his body and that deep, pleasant thrum.  The stirring in his groin was unwelcome, but not unexpected.

Fingers clenched tightly around the ball and with every ounce of will he had he forced those creeping, clutching tendrils back.  It would not feed on him today.

"Show me," he rasped through gritted teeth.  "Show me if she spoke true."

The light flickered like a guttering candle, and a figure swam into focus.  Rumpelstiltskin’s throat tightened.

Her name formed on his lips, but his breath was lost.   _Belle._

She was running.  Her cloak flapped behind her in tatters, her dress torn.  Men followed behind her, Rumpelstiltskin could hear the hoof beats of their horses as they closed on her, saw her lose her footing as she looked over her shoulder at her would-be captors.  Her feet were bare, the soles bloody.  Scrambling to her feet again, she ran blindly, branches whipping at her face and tearing at her clothes, stealing whiplash glances over her shoulders as she went.  Under her hood, her face was a blanched-white moon, eyes wild and wide and full of terror.

A shadow loomed over her and her scream was lost in a flurry of hoof beats.

The glass flickered again and pulsed in his hands.  A low cry slipped from him as the next image resolved, and his will crumbled.  A stone tower.  Stripped bare and shackled to a stone altar, Belle twisted and sobbed as a robed cleric with a braided leather whip landed blow after blow on her vulnerable body.  Harsh lines of welling blood stood out stark against her pale skin.  Four more robed figures stood in a semi-circle around the table, chanting prayers to an indifferent god who would not answer.  

The head cleric gathered up the whip, Rumpelstiltskin saw droplets of blood shake from the tip to the patter to the floor.  He bent low over Belle, grasping her chin and prying her eyelids open.  Muttering something, he shook his head, and from the depths of his robe produced a small, thin knife.  Still grasping her chin, he turned her head to show her the blade, still speaking in that low voice.  Belle shook her head vehemently, tears flowing freely down the sides of her face towards her ears.  The blade pressed against her cheek as he muttered another question.

Drawing in a shuddering breath, Belle gave the cleric her answer: she spat in his face.

He recoiled, scrubbing at his face as though he feared corruption, then descended on her again, pinning her right arm at the elbow and taking the knife to her arm.

Rumpelstiltskin watched, helpless and horrified, as the godless bastard began stripping the flesh from Belle’s arm.  The glass blazed with awful, living light as his last defenses fell and it battened on him greedily, feeding on him, gorging on his misery.  It pulsed quicker, and Rumpelstiltskin realized distantly that it was beating in time with his own heart.

The thing had not finished, and Belle swam into focus once more, perched on the carved balustrade of the tower balcony.  A thin, bloodstained shift was all that covered her body.  Long bloody patches lined her forearms, her thighs, and the bloom of blood on her shift suggested more across her breasts.  Her face was passive, almost peaceful.  The wind tugged at her shift, at her hair, streaming out behind her.  Above her the moon rose, a ghostly sphere painted in bloody tones.

“ _No,_ " he whispered into the glass, pleading as though she could hear him, as if it had not happened already.  " _Belle please no, I can find you, I can save you, please Belle pleeeease._ ”

For a moment he though she had heard him somehow, as she began to turn slowly, as if to climb down.  And then her eyes closed.  There was a hint of a smile on her face, unhindered by the tears on her cheeks.  Her lips moved, and though he could hear nothing, he knew she spoke his name.  

A long, treacherous moment passed, and then Belle spread her arms wide and let herself fall.

The ground rushed up to meet his true love, a final welcoming embrace, and when death took her the scene was lost in a blinding blaze of pink light.  Rumpelstiltskin howled, his face a gaunt and skull-like in the ball’s light, every muscle in his body drawn tight.  Summoning up his strength he struck out at the demon-thing with his mind, a burst of dark magic woven with agony.  The thing in the glass shrank back from him, the tendrils in his mind receding, and Rumpelstiltskin heaved the ball across the room.  Stone chips flew from the wall where it struck, and Maerlyn’s Rainbow rolled across the floor, dark and unblemished, and for the moment, sated.

* * *

Far away, in a tower room, Belle-Marie de Villeneuve stared out at the expanse of forest around her prison tower, the treetops hundreds of feet below.  She could escape that way, certainly, but it was too final an escape for her to consider too strongly.  With a small piece of soft stone she scratched another mark on the wall beside her.  Thirty-eight days so far.

There was a sound of distant laughter from below, peals of dark glee that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.  Belle shuddered to think of what could give such joy to so evil a Queen.


End file.
